The big bird has taken to the skies. In its first operational deployment since it landed in India on June 18, the Indian Air Force’s gigantic Boeing C-17 Globemaster III strategic airlift aircraft transported an Army infantry battalion to the country’s last military outpost in the Andman and Nicobar Islands on Sunday. “Operating from the [...]

A little bit of World War II history flew into St. Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia on Monday. The Experimental Aircraft Association’s Boeing B-17G-VE Flying Fortress “Aluminum Overcast” touched down to spend a couple of days on display and give rides to paying customers. Despite my affinity for air sickness, I rode along on a media flight. [...]

1872 – Louis Blériot (shown above), the pioneer aviator who made the world’s first airplane flight across the English Channel, is born in Cambrai, France. 1915 – German Air Service Leutnant Kurt Wintgens achieves the first aerial victory by a true fighter plane in history when he downs a Morane-Saulnier two-seat observation aircraft with his Fokker M.5 K/MG production prototype of the Eindecker. He later becomes [...]

A quick-thinking pilot safely landed a helicopter on the Hudson River Sunday morning after the aircraft’s engine failed midair during a routine sightseeing flight with a family of four Swedish tourists, authorities said. The pilot, Michael Campbell, 22 years old, said he was flying north roughly 1,500 feet above the Hudson at about 120 mph [...]

The first aircraft flight in Everett, Wash., which took place 100 years ago, went largely unseen. That’s a far cry from the masses of onlookers for the first flight of Boeing’s 787, assembled and flown at Paine Field. And the 1913 flight probably drew fewer people than Everett officials had planned. Everett leaders had watched [...]

Alaska’s Centennial of Flight celebration now includes a particularly special aircraft, a Vultee BT-13B Valiant World War II training plane that was formally donated to the Commemorative Air Force Thursday by longtime Anchorage resident Howard “Mike” Hunt. The BT13B flew earlier this month in Kenai as part of aviation celebrations underway across Alaska all summer, culminating in Fairbanks on July [...]

A gleaming silver and banana-yellow Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, a vintage bomber from World War II, rolled past the window behind David Hunt. It’s up for sale. Seated at his desk inside the Military Aviation Museum in Pungo, Va., Hunt, the museum’s director, reiterated Saturday that the business is fine – for now. Although the [...]

1891 – Birth of Carl Andrew “Tooey” Spaatz, American World War I pilot, World War II general and first chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. 1927 – Lester Maitland and co-pilot Albert Francis Hegenberger takes off their U.S. Army Fokker C-2 ”Bird of Paradise” from Oakland, Calif., to Honolulu for the first non-stop flight between the U.S. [...]